374 Memoir Sears Foundation for Marine Research 



sportsmen have thought it worth special pursuit with the harpoon." We have never heard 

 any rumor of its molesting bathers, nor would this be likely, judging from the nature of 

 its prey. 



Range. Western Atlantic, from southern New England to southern Florida, Louisi- 

 ana and southern Brazil. It has been reported also from various localities in the Mediter- 

 ranean, southern coast of Spain (but whether inside or outside the Straits of Gibraltar is 

 not stated), the Canaries and Cape Verdes. But we still await actual comparison of speci- 

 mens from the two sides of the ocean." 



Occurrence in the Western Atlantic. Owing to a long-standing tendency to call any 

 Carcharhinus encountered on the middle Atlantic coast of the United States a Dusky Shark, 

 milberti has been reported so often as obscurus that little dependence can be placed on pub- 

 lished locality records for it unless these are accompanied by some evidence of actual iden- 

 tity more convincing than the mere name. However, information is at hand to show that 

 it is a regular seasonal migrant along the east coast of the United States. Thus it is present 

 along both coasts of southern Florida from December to March, being perhaps the most 

 abundant of the species caught commercially at Salerno on the east coast at that season," and 

 it visits the coasts of New Jersey and New York regularly only in summer though in such 

 numbers that it has been repeatedly described as "abundant" and is to be seen most any 

 summer day in the bays of New Jersey." Recent reports of 305 sharks being harpooned in 

 Great South Bay, Long Island, during the summers of 191 1 to 1927 (almost all being 

 milberti) J of 46 being taken in one summer, and of 14 being harpooned there in one day 

 (August 1 1, 1906)," give a more precise indication of the actual numbers concerned. It is 

 rather common off Rhode Island also during the warm months, occasionally entering 

 Narragansett Bay. Likewise it visits the Buzzards Bay-Vineyard Sound-Nantucket Sound 

 region yearly, but so much less abundantly that the number taken near Woods Hole m an 

 average summer probably does not exceed six or seven. And Cape Cod so sharply marks 

 the usual limit to its northerly dispersal that there is no reliable record of it for the Gulf 

 of Maine,"' for the fishing banks off its mouth or for Nova Scotia. In the vicinity of New 

 York its season of maximum abundance (mostly females as noted above) is from mid- 

 June to mid-September, the latest for Sandy Hook Bay being October 195 extremes re- 

 ported for it at Block Island are May and November. 



91. For a vivid account of harpooning milberti in the bays of Long Island, New York, see Nichols and Murphy 

 (Brooklyn Mus. Sci. Bull., 3 [i], 1916: 16). 



92. The view is generally held that the milberti of the two sides of the Atlantic are one species. Although one from 

 southern Spain, described by Rey (Fauna Iberica, Feces, /, 1928: 346), agreed with American specimens as to 

 fins and teeth, the account does not state whether or not it had a mid-dorsal ridge; its denticles, too, were more 

 closely spaced, and their margins more definitely dentate than in those we have examined. 



93. Knowledge that milberti occurs around southern Florida dates only from the recent development of the local 

 fishery; the only previous Florida record for it, and that by name only, was for the Indian River (Goode, Proc. 

 U.S. nat. Mus., j, 1879: 121). 



94. Baird, Rep. Smithson. Inst. (1854), p, 1855: 352. 



95. Rockwell, Brooklyn Mus. Quart., 3, 1916: 160-167; Thome, Bull. N. Y. zool. Soc, 5/, 1928: 114. 



96. An early statement that it ranges as far as New Hampshire (DeKay, Zool. N. Y., 4, 1 842 : 350) teems not to have 

 had any factual basis. 



